SCOTUS confirmation battle, stimulus stalemate highlight partisan divide
Jessie Christopher Smith, Reporter
October 26, 2020
WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee was confirmed Monday night, Oklahoma’s two senators pinned the blame on Democrats as coronavirus relief negotiations stalled yet again. Sens. James Lankford and Jim Inhofe criticized Senate Democrats for what they said were unf...
Oklahoma senators affirm support for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee
Jessie Christopher Smith, Reporter
October 21, 2020
WASHINGTON — Oklahoma’s two senators pledged their support of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett with a vote looming late next week. Both said they found her to be highly qualified to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who passed away last month, setting off a high-stakes political fight ...
Renaming OKC post office a lesson on civil rights
Jessie Christopher Smith, Reporter
October 1, 2020
WASHINGTON -- A bill renaming the downtown Oklahoma City post office for an Oklahoma civil rights icon has been stalled in a Senate committee of which Sen. James Lankford is a member. The bill to rename the post office in honor of Clara Luper passed in the House of Representatives on Sept. 14. Rep...
Oklahoma in ‘final sprint’ before census deadline
Bennett Brinkman, Reporter
September 23, 2020
As the Sept. 30 deadline for census responses approaches, a number of Oklahoma groups are working to ensure as many people as possible are counted. Oklahoma currently has a response rate of 93.8%, ranking 38th in the nation for response rates, according to the official census website. The Oklahoma Complete...
Census awareness raised in immigrant communities despite bureau troubles
Jessie Christopher Smith, Reporter
September 15, 2020
WASHINGTON – Oklahoma may have been spared missing thousands of immigrants in the 2020 census when a federal judge temporarily stopped the Trump administration from ending the census early, according to civil rights groups. The United States Census Bureau had set an Oct. 31 deadline for ending the...
Black Lives Matter rallies for Julius Jones at Washington march
Jessie Christopher Smith, Reporter
August 28, 2020
WASHINGTON — Thirteen members of the Black Lives Matter OKC chapter called for clemency of Oklahoma death row inmate Julius Jones while joining others marching to protest police brutality and racial injustice along the National Mall on Friday. Fifty-seven years after the Rev. Martin Luther King...
Kiowa Chairman’s impeachment hearing delayed
Nancy Spears, Reporter
July 30, 2020
The impeachment trial for Matthew Komalty, chairman of the 14,000 member Kiowa Tribe was halted Thursday after the Court of Indian Offenses ordered a delay. Komalty sought the delay because of a concern that two legislators were reportedly exposed to COVID-19, one receiving a false positive test re...
For Oklahoma seniors, legal marijuana is a new frontier
Wendy Weitzel, Reporter
July 29, 2020
Back doors, secret shops, shady exchanges, cryptic messages on bulletin boards. This is how Belinda Davis remembers the underground weed sales in Fayetteville, the Arkansas college town where she came of age in the 1960s. For Davis, 76, even with the persistent tide of medical marijuana legalization re...
Exiled to Indian Country: Osage Nation
Jim North, Reporter
July 27, 2020
The exchange of lush, green woodlands for the dry, unwanted land of Indian Territory came with plot twists. Osage ancestral territory east of the Mississippi included the Ohio Valley region, taking in portions of Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Illinois. The Osage ...
Post McGirt, the plan of action remains unsettled
Breanna Mitchell and Wendy Weitzel
July 26, 2020
A small chink has emerged in the united front coming from Oklahoma’s tribes and the state Attorney General’s office. Two of the so-called Five Tribes say they are opposed to an agreement that divides how criminal cases will be handled in Indian Country as tribal members started protesting the ...
Kiowas seeking to impeach chairman
Nancy Spears, Reporter
July 23, 2020
The Kiowa Tribe chairman is facing impeachment over his handling of coronavirus relief funds by the tribe’s 7-member legislative branch. The mishandling of the money, distributed by the federal government through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, is one of five “constitution...
DACA recipients find community and common ground in advocacy
Wendy Weitzel, Reporter
July 16, 2020
Tasneem Al-Michael is the son of parents he admires, the younger of two children, the proud owner of a cat named Moon and the only person in the Al-Michael family who is undocumented. When he came to Oklahoma City from Bangladesh at 9 months old, his family clutched valuable visas allowing the entir...
